learly written, was as eager almost as her master, and as the note she
had to utter was practically the only one left in the register of her
voice, her deafness provided little difficulty.

"Though when the letters awake into life and cry aloud," said Skale,
beaming upon her dear old apple-skinned face, "it will be in tones that
even the deaf shall hear. For they will spell a measure of redemption
that shall destroy in a second of time all physical disabilities
whatsoever...."

It was at this moment Spinrobin asked a question that for days had
been hovering about his lips. He asked it gravely, hesitatingly, even
solemnly, while Miriam hung upon the answer with an anxiety as great
as his own.

"And if any one of us fails," he said, "and pronounces falsely, will the
result affect all of us, or only the utterer?"

"The utterer only," replied the clergyman. "For it is his own spirit that
must absorb the forces and powers invoked by the sound he utters."

He took the question lightly, it seemed. The possibility of failure was
too remote to be practical.

Chapter XIII

I

But Spinrobin was hardly prepared for the suddenness of the denouement.
He had looked for a longer period of preparation, with the paraphernalia
of a considerable, even an august ceremony. Instead, the announcement
came with an abrupt simplicity that caught him with a horrid shock of
surprise. He was taken wholly unawares.

"The only thing I fear," Mr. Skale had confided to them, "is that the
vibrations of our chord may have already risen to the rooms and cause a
premature escape. But, even so, we shall have ample warning. For the
deaf, being protected from the coarser sounds of earth, are swift to hear
the lightest whispers from Heaven. Mrs. Mawle will know. Mrs. Mawle will
instantly warn us...."

And this, apparently, was what happened, though not precisely as Mr.
Skale had intended, nor with the margin for preparation he had hoped. It
was all so swift and brief and shattering, that to hear Spinrobin tell it
makes one think of a mass of fireworks that some stray spark has sent
with blazing explosion into the air, to the complete loss of the
calculated effect had they gone off seriatim as intended.

And in the awful stress of excitement there can be no question that
Spinny acted out of that subconscious region of the mind which considers
and weighs deeds before passing them on to the surface mind, translating
them into physical express